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Monday, August 19, 2013

Who could resist
that face? Certainly not me. So when Jessie Pavelka recently asked me to “hook
him up”, I was quick to promise my next blog post would be about the real man whose
face is synonymous with one of Twitter’s most popular “book boyfriends”.

How it all began….

I first
learned who Jessie was the way nearly one hundred thousand other women did, when
I stumbled across @ChristianTGrey’s twitter account. After getting over the
initial shock of learning fictional characters have twitter accounts, my next
thought was “who is this gorgeous man?”A
quick internet search revealed the handsome face actually belonged to fitness
and well being expert Jessie Pavelka. As
one of the world’s top celebrity trainers, Jessie has appeared on numerous American
and British television programs including The View, Lifetime’s DietTribe, and Oprah’s
OWN Wake-Up Workout. He can currently be seen on Sky Living’s new documentary
series, Fat: The Fight of My Life.

Jessie was
recently a guest on Northwest Prime, a blogtalk radio program hosted by Seattle’s
Lori Ness. I was fortunate enough to speak with him during the show and both
Lori and I had questions for Jessie about his connection to the phenomenon that
is Fifty Shades of Grey. On being “cast” as twitter’s original
Christian Grey…

Jessie
Pavelka was the unofficial “face” of Christian Grey months before the Fifty
Shades series was even released by Random House. “I have no idea how this
happened,” he told Ness. “It’s very
flattering, I will say that.”

When I asked
Jessie what he thought about having 94,000 people following him as the AVI of
@ChristianTGrey, he laughed and replied, “It makes me envy this guy, because I
only have 25,000,” then quickly added, “I’m fortunate to have my picture used,
so I’m not complaining.”

In fact, far
from it. Jessie not only considers the use of his image to be flattering, he
even follows the account himself. “I’m blessed in a lot of ways to have that
happen. It was a picture of me and then people wanted to know who it was…Some
of the stuff I do never kind of gets recognized, so what this does is allow
people who would never see what I do…it gives them kind of a window into that
as well. So if nothing ever came from this, at least there’s that.”

On whether or not he’s
read Fifty Shades of Grey...Jessie admits he was “given a copy of the book and went
through it a bit”. While he “could see why people would like it”, he’s not sure
the content was made for him.

On being considered for the role of Christian
Grey…

While his
work right now is fitness based, Jessie is no stranger to the screen. In
addition to the previously mentioned fitness programs, Jessie also appeared in the pilot episode of
“Friday Night Lights”. And while he’s “very
open to the idea of a new role”, he says no one has contacted him about the
role of Christian Grey. When a caller asked who he could see playing his
co-star, Jessie very diplomatically answered, “my wife.” Hmm…well played, Mr.
Pavelka, well played.

More than just a pretty face….

One of
Jessie’s latest endeavors is serving as patron of the UK Charity HOOP (Helping
Overcome Obesity Problems) which aims to assist obese young people with finding
healthy solutions. The organization
strives to be a hub of information while supporting not only the children, but
their parents as well. You can find out
more about Jessie’s involvement in this worthy cause by visiting http://hoopuk.org.uk/or watching this video from his website.

And finally…

Be sure to follow @Jessie_Pavelka on twitter. Seems only fair
he have as many followers as Christian Grey!